


wings where we had shoulders

by syllogismos



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Canonical Gore, Character Study, Episode s01e05: Coquilles, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Magical Realism, Wingfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-08
Updated: 2013-05-08
Packaged: 2017-12-10 20:25:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/789802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/syllogismos/pseuds/syllogismos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will hasn't told anyone (hasn't told Hannibal, hasn't told Jack, hasn't told Alana) that he hasn't only been dreaming of corpses impaled on antlers and blood and death and Abigail Hobbs. He's been dreaming of flying too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	wings where we had shoulders

Will isn’t ready after all, not for this. But he’s not ready for _his_ reasons, not for Jack’s reasons. Jack’s reasons are the picturesque combination of grotesque mutilation and painterly composition, illuminated perfectly with soft morning light through the window, curtains drawn open.

For Will, walking into that motel room and finding those angels, skin-wings stretched up in an (anatomically incorrect) parody of flight, strung up with fishing line… Walking in and finding _that_ gives him reasons. Two of them. And not _gives_ him, exactly, but _reminds_ him of their existence. The sight makes Will’s reasons twitch and then itch and strain against his mind. There’s a stretching pushing boiling sensation of his wings on the verge of breaking through because he wasn’t prepared for _this_. There’s the sensation of a membrane stretched thin with a bowling ball rolling onto it and weighing down and down, stretching the membrane thinner _thinner_ , the bowling ball threatening to break through and leave jagged edges fluttering.

* * *

 _"He’s_ transforming _them."_

Will speaks, and he fights to subdue the memories of his own transformation: the memory of wings breaking through skin (painful, shocking, freakish), the memory of losing duckling down for flight feathers (achingly painful, distracting, natural), the memory of his first attempt at flight (painful, predictable, humiliating).

* * *

_“Madness slept here last night.”_

Will hasn’t told anyone (hasn’t told Hannibal, hasn’t told Jack, hasn’t told Alana) that he hasn’t only been dreaming of corpses impaled on antlers and blood and death and Abigail Hobbs. He’s been dreaming of flying too. He’s been dreaming of spreading his wings, floating over his land, over his little house like a boat on the sea. _That’s_ when he feels safe: above it all, skimming on an updraft, his primaries shuddering with turbulence.

* * *

_“Not nervous. Righteous.”_

_"He thinks he’s…_ elevating _them somehow."_

Will can’t stop the fingers of his left hand rolling and fluttering (and maybe doesn’t want to). It’s Jack, at his back; Jack, in the way, if Will tried. If Will wanted to try. But he can’t, not here. So: the bed, on his back, ignoring what’s beyond his human form impossibly rooted to either side of his spine at the level of his shoulder blades. If they were real, his wings, he wouldn’t be able to lie on his back like this. If he were an angel, pure and true, he wouldn’t be able to get inside their minds.

* * *

_“This is my gift to you. I allow you to become angels.”_

This one is unusually difficult to get at. Gift? Will’s wings have never been a gift. They’ve made him (even more of) a freak; they’ve hindered him; they _hurt_.

But perhaps other people might find them beautiful or inspiring. That must be the attraction. That’s what Will had hoped for, when he used to hope.

* * *

_“Unless he’s careful about being self-destructive, making angels to pray over him when he sleeps. Who prays over us when we sleep?”_

First Hannibal tries—so obviously, _too_ obviously—to turn Will against Jack. It’s glaring at first: so clumsy, so trite and unpolished. But it turns out to be a feint—misdirection (classic)—so that Hannibal can slide these more important observations under Will’s radar: _I know you’re self-destructive, Will, and I know you’re careful about it. Because you and I, we are the same. We are the same except that you haven’t even spread your wings, much less flown, in over ten years. You’ve let your feathers get dirty, and you’ve ignored where patches of them have fallen out from constant chafing. Wings are not meant to be kept folded, Will; you know this._

Will doesn’t understand all this until after he’s left Hannibal’s office, after he’s observed a single black feather marking the place in one of Hannibal’s books on his desk. And after Hannibal has guided him out of his office, laying one of his long-fingered hands over Will’s spine, just between his wing roots. His hand had been heavy and steady and warm even through layers of cloth, and Will’s wings had strained again, not a twitch this time, but a hitching shudder of muscle and bone that left feathers uncomfortably out of place and a prickling uneasiness at the back of Will’s mind. That uneasiness, after reflection, bloomed into understanding: Hannibal _knows_. Hannibal has them too.

After Will lashes out at Jack, everyone leaves him alone in the alley with the second victim, and Will is helpless against temptation. For the first time in over a decade, he spreads his wings. Atrophied muscles tremble and disordered feathers catch on each other, tugging with an unpleasant pressure that borders on pain.

But it still feels good. Right. True.

* * *

_“Do I seem different?”_

Hope is so stupidly persistent. According to Katz, these things are supposed to be _told_ , but that’s…laughable. Katz wouldn’t believe _wings_. No one has ever believed wings, and Will stopped hoping. It’s laughable to think that anything has changed. Nothing ever changes. Will is Will. Murderers murder. Victims die. Wings twitch and feathers itch, and no one ever sees them.

Except: Will had seen _something_ , when he first met Hannibal. Hannibal had turned his back, and Will had seen a sort of negative impression, like the afterimage from a camera flash, red and bright and painful on his retinas: a negative impression of feathers and the suggested structure of a powerful pair of wings, folded neatly behind their owner, the top joints reaching up above his shoulders and the tips of his primaries just barely brushing the plush carpet.

And further evidence: Hannibal stands behind him, but not too close, never too close, always leaving space for Will’s wings, even when he’s _smelling_ him. Hannibal feeds him things, and Will starts to notice that his feathers are looking healthier, shinier, and they feel less fragile. It takes him an embarrassingly long time to realize that it’s the extra protein from Hannibal’s cooking.

Hannibal likes to walk, sometimes, when they talk, but they never walk anywhere where heights can be achieved. Hannibal keeps Will from temptation. Or he tries, at least. Hannibal’s efforts don’t prevent Will from finding himself on his roof in his shorts and T-shirt, having caved to temptation through the enabling oblivion of slumber.

* * *

_“I don’t know how much longer I can be all that useful to you, Jack.”_

What Will means is that the temptation is threatening to consume him.

* * *

 _"But I_ am _looking alone. And you know what looking at this does."_

In fact, Jack _doesn’t_ know what looking at this does. What looking at this does is that when left alone in the barn with Elliot Budish hanging above him, Will caves again. He can blame it on mirror neurons, perhaps, this time. (Telling Jack, “It isn’t this one,” that’s a lie.)

* * *

 _"This is_ bad _for me."_

Will spreads his wings, and they tremble only slightly now; they’re getting stronger (again). He stands with dirt and hay under his soles (gritty) and dust in his nostrils (irritating) and a dead man strung up above him (gruesomely beautiful), and he stretches his wings to their full span, feeling his primaries separate, stiff and ready.

* * *

_“I see what you are.”_

He spreads his wings again that evening, at home in his backyard without the excuse of mirror neurons, and his dogs bark and bay and protest. They protest his _nature_ , and they keep their distance. His dogs aren’t reckless, not like he is.

Will twists and takes hold of one wing, pulling it up and stretching it out to examine. Even his own touch is quite nearly unbearable; the sensation is like fingertip touch on sensitive sunburned skin or like having someone probe deep into your navel with his tongue. Will struggles to focus on examination and ignore sensation: his feathers are soft, gleaming, growing back in where they’d been chafed away. Dragging his fingers through them to untangle and rearrange is so intensely pleasurable that it’s not really pleasure. Will closes his eyes against the sensation and feels only the setting sun on his eyelids and the freedom of finally having his whole body, his _real_ body, exposed and open.

That night Will steps out onto the roof. He decides it, this time, awake. Will steps out, and then he steps _off_. That night, for the first time in far too long, Will steps off his roof and doesn’t fall. He flies.


End file.
